Suburban Red Crossbills

[Curt Brown --- Boulder, CO]

Early one morning I had to blink a few times to convince myself that we had several Red Crossbills at the feeders.  I expected them to be gone the next day, but after a week our local group of 10 are still here, sitting high in the cottenwoods when not feeding.  This is a  first for us in more than 40 years in South Boulder.  Are we in the midst of a Crossbill irruption?

[Preston Sowell]

That's an interesting observation. We've had a flock of 10-14 crossbills on our feeder (black sunflower) in Pine Brook Hills everyday for two weeks now as well. About two weeks before they arrived, another flock came through for 1/2 a day, but only fed on the local ponderosa pine cones.

Preston

Boulder, County

On Mon, May 8, 2023 at 8:01 AM Curt Brown --- Boulder, CO <cbrown...@gmail.com> wrote:

Early one morning I had to blink a few times to convince myself that we had several Red Crossbills at the feeders.  I expected them to be gone the next day, but after a week our local group of 10 are still here, sitting high in the cottenwoods when not feeding.  This is a  first for us in more than 40 years in South Boulder.  Are we in the midst of a Crossbill irruption?

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[Doug Ward]

Curt & Preston,

 

Thanks for bring your crossbills to the attention of the group.  It seems this mini irruption to the lowlands, if that’s what’s going on, isn’t limited to Boulder as we had an individual adult male RED CROSSBILL fly over our place (Athmar Park, SW Denver, Denver Co.) on Saturday (6 May’23) - definitely a surprise!  It sounded like a Lodgepole (Type 5) to my ear, but given it caught me off guard and didn’t get a recording, not confident in the ID.  Curt, your photos look like Ponderosas (Type 2) with their huge bills and more brick red coloring, and certainly Preston your guys feeding in Ponderosas seem to point to some Type 2s spilling out of the hills right now (also, Type 2s seem to be the main type that actually come into feeders).

 

Thanks again for the posts.  Keep your ears open for some crossbills of your own – something’s going on.

 

Good Birding,

Doug

Denver

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[Preston Sowell]

What I found most interesting is that the first group only fed on the ponderosa pine. They would drop down for a drink at the water bath, but never attempted to feed from the feeder that was only feet away.

This latest group came straight to the feeder and (from what i've observed), has not attempted to feed from any of the surrounding ponderosa pine.

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